This coming election is one that I'd love to have voted in. Except I got a letter through the door this week saying that the Ontario Court of Appeals has ruled that expats must wish to return to Canada and must not be gone more than 5 years unless employed by the government.

These restrictions are fucking idiotic. I fully intend to return, I just don't know when exactly. So what if I've been gone 5 years (and 16 days). I still care a great deal about my country. I was born and raised and will always be Canadian, not even dual citizenship will change that in the slightest. I want to at least have the opportunity to have my say about its future or I might not recognise it when I do eventually return.

So unless I can prove I work abroad for the government by the 15th of September, my rights as a citizen will be trampled.

Is there going to be a Supreme Court challenge or have they already declined to consider this?

Your argument is like saying McD's and their hamburger supplier are violating RICO laws since the burger maker gets a kickback overtime McD's sells a burger and you can't buy just the bun without paying for the burger as well.

Actually you can. When I was in school, a classmate got a job at McDonalds. They handed out photocopies of the till buttons to people who were going to be cashiers and told them to go practice a bit with their friends & family.

I had a look at this sheet, there were buttons for everything.. no bun, no pickle, no patty, even a button for socks if you can believe it. We worked out that it was possible to order a hamburger with no bun, no patty, no pickle, no condiments, no onions, nothing. Technically I guess you'd still be charged for it and you'd end up with an empty wrapper. I have no idea if their actual till would allow such a thing, but there were certainly all the right buttons required to fulfil the order.

This was probably about 15 years ago now but I'm sure it hasn't changed that much.

Those average speed cameras are usually only in construction zones on the motorway where the lanes have been narrowed and speed reduced to 50mph, and they have a fairly generous leeway as well. I've never been ticketed for driving 54mph (actual speed, speedo shows 59mph) on cruise through these areas for years, and you're constantly overtaken by people going at least 3-4mph faster... who knows if they get ticketed though. There are also fixed speed cameras, red light cameras and CCTV cameras all over the place for your surveillance pleasure.

Don't pick on the UK too much though, if you drive in France on the Péage (toll) motorways, I've heard they clock your time in and time out, and at the exit tolls your speeding fine is payable on the spot. Most of Europe has on the spot fines, but it's usually tens of Euros, not hundreds of dollars like in the US or Canada.

We've been with Tiscali/TalkTalk for a few years. The best part is the unlimited international calls package (we make good use of it). The DSL speeds have dropped over the past year though. We used to get a solid 3.5mbps down and 800kbps up, which is fine, but it's dropped to 2.5mbps down and 700kbps up... it's tough to stream video on two machines at once. Also, they actively DOS torrents between 6pm and midnight. I say actively DOS because throttling would imply that it's based on need and network congestion, but they just murder the download down to about 1-5k/sec. Upload is unaffected.

The ban on electronic devices in general is for no other reason than to force you to pay attention. Takeoffs and landings are the most critical phases of flight where the most can go wrong. They want your maximum attention during these times in case of an emergency. Yelling brace brace isn't gonna get through if everybody's got their MP3 players turned up to 11. That's why they still let you have your headphones plugged in to the in seat entertainment system, because any announcements pre-empt whatever you're doing and come over the headphones as well. They obviously want to minimize risk as much as possible, so transmitters aren't allowed the entire flight.

Not everyone listens though, myself included... I've been able to send & receive texts during take off but once we got into the clouds I lost the network, whereas a friend of mine managed to send a text in flight over Atlanta on his way to Cuba from Toronto. I've left my phone on for entire flights without realizing as well, as I'm sure thousands of others do every day. I also usually have my MP3 player on, but I do pay attention to what's going on around me. A family friend owns a Cessna 152 float plane and he rigged up a system to use his cell phone over his headset, but when the phone's in use, he says the instruments go wacky. Unfortunately I didn't see it in action.

I've been lucky enough to have had a peek inside one of the cases (as it was being built and having the kinks ironed out) they're going to use to transport the reflector sail things from the manufacturer to the assembly plant, one case per sail. My friend is the shop's computer guy. The case was enormous and had to be perfectly air tight so it could be filled with nitrogen to protect the sail during transport. I saw it in July so I'm pretty sure they've finished and shipped them all by now.

Granted, it wasn't a component of the actual spacecraft, but an important piece of the puzzle nonetheless. I still think it was very cool to have had the privilege of poking my head inside, snapping a few photos and chatting with the guys making it.

Yes, but when the cops enforce the law and you get punished, you go to jail or you get a fine. It's tangible.

When you "do bad stuff" and don't listen to "God" (or whatever term you feel like using), there's no direct punishment. It all takes place after you die. You go to heaven or hell. Very conveniently, no one can confirm their existence, since you have to die to get in. It seems as if the people who invented this nonsense purposely made it so it couldn't be disproven by any living being. Good thing the dead can't talk.

Really, huh? Last time I checked they still taught "FIRST look left, THEN look right, THEN cross the streets" to our kids, did they forgo that in your country?

Unforunately that's not a universal rule. If people did that where I live, there wouldn't be many left to tell the tale. I've almost stepped out in front of a car before I got used to looking "the wrong way" first. BTW, I'm Canadian and I live in the UK. My wife has done the exact opposite in Canada and Germany. Luckily I was there to stop her and vice versa. "The left side's the right side and the right side's the wrong side" is the saying I think.

The change in traffic handedness really screws people up. It doesn't take me long to get used to it while driving or as a passenger, but if I think about it for too long it really does my head in.

Easily. Even if this company manages to develop the game (I believe the devkits require licenses), it won't be signed by MS, a necessary step to run on an unmodified console. If you had a mod chip, you would likely be able to run it as could then run unsigned code.

If they were smart, they would develop it for the PC. At the same time, they should also devote some devs to improve the open source drivers for the Kinect. That way they have their swingin 3D sex game and, aside from the fact that very few, if any retailers would actually sell it, no one could stop them from selling it. Microsoft might try to do something if they use a Kinect in their advertising, but I'm not sure how that would actually pan out.

I was in The George (Wetherspoon pub) on George St in Croydon a couple of weekends ago for breakfast, and in the men's washroom there were cameras with signs underneath explaining that they were there to prevent people using drugs in the washroom. It certainly took me by surprise. They seemed to be pointing at the sinks and the door. Some of the cameras were visible from the urinals so presumably one could be seen on camera using them. It was difficult to tell where they were pointing exactly since they were all the black dome type cameras.

I remember thinking at the time that if anyone wanted to snort some coke or whatever that badly, they could easily take a seat in one of the stalls and do whatever they wanted off camera.